In a conventional surgical procedure, including a conventional laparoscopic procedure, a surgeon who holds one or two surgical tools and then applies the one or two surgical tools on a tissue, e.g., by pushing or pulling on the tissue, can actually feel the pressure or tension applied on the tissue as a result of a physical haptic feedback transmitted through the surgical tools back to the surgeon. Based on this physical haptic feedback, the surgeon can quickly adjust the applied force until a desirable physical haptic feedback is received.
In contrast, in a robotic surgery platform, surgeons working with remote controllers are physically and mechanically detached from the robotic arms and end effectors/surgical tools interacting with the surgical subject, and as such do not receive physical haptic feedback. To gauge the applied forces, a “visual haptic” technique is often used. More specifically, surgeons watch visual appearances of tissues under applied forces in video feeds on video monitors and use their experiences and expertise to make mental mappings between what they see on the video feeds and what they think the applied forces on the tissues should be, and make adjustments on the applied forces if necessary.
However, there can be a vast amount of inconsistency in judging the applied forces on the tissues based on the visual appearances from one surgeon to another surgeon and among surgeons of different skill/experience levels. It can be expected that a more experienced surgeon can make more accurate mappings based on the visual haptics than a less experienced surgeon. Unfortunately, there is no good way to provide a consistent correlation between what a surgeon sees in the video and what the applied force really is.